Home Page
Hi folks,
Welcome to Ant’s privy digging pages! I live in Bloomington, Illinois and collect old bottles dating between 1850-1900. This website is geared towards the hobby of bottle collecting with an emphasis on privy digging.
Privies, or outhouses as they are often known, were used before indoor plumbing was invented and in some places even after too! So if you wanted to use the loo you had to go outside in the garden and essentially do your business in a hole in the ground! Add a hundred a years or so and that’s where I come in… literally. By now the structure itself has gone and the poop has turned into nitrogen-rich soil.
You may ask, “Why on earth would you want do dig up a 100+ year old bowel movement?” Well, I’m not after the turds but the other stuff which ended up down there. As there was no rubbish removal back in those days people would often dispose of their household waste by tossing it in the nearest hole, which as you have guessed, was the privy.
I can hear you ask, “Well, what do you find?”, to which I reply, “Bottles, stoneware, marbles, plates, cups, cutlery, coins… heck, everything!” Others have found guns, brass knuckles, watch fobs, gold chains etc… You see, whether you were throwing away trash, getting rid of incriminating evidence or you simply had a hole in your pocket, the privy didn’t discriminate. The tears of many young children have been shed upon hearing the dreaded “splat” echo in their ears only to see their favorite porcelain doll or train sitting on top of the most recent deposit.
Anyway, I hope to provide you with a pleasant insight into the very unusual world of scraping through very old POO to collect very old glass. Are you sitting comfortably? then let me begin.
(This is where you click on digging stories.)
I am always looking to add to my collection of Bloomington bottles, if you have any you’d like to sell please contact me at:
greens@cdelph.com
